School leaders left ‘confused’ and ‘saturated’ by government guidance during Covid lockdown, major new report finds

School leaders were left feeling confused and overwhelmed by mixed messaging in guidelines and advice issued by the government during the last year’s school shutdown, a new report shows.

Only 2.5% felt supported by the Department for Education, as headteachers were forced to make decisions based on “insufficient advice and incomplete guidelines” from Ministers.

The most in-depth study of the UK education system during the pandemic to date, Shock to the System: Lessons Learned from Covid-19 examines the results of daily polls, interviews, data sources — including the Teacher Tapp app — and expert perspectives. It presents recommendations to equip policymakers, leaders and educators to drive not only recovery, but progress.

One headteacher told researchers from EDUCATE Ventures that she could not face opening new missives from the Department for Education — many of which arrived late at night or just days before schools were due to return in September.

She said: “I know there are points at which I get more guidance and I physically look at it and I can’t even bring myself to open it right now. Because you just get saturated with it.”

However, staff who felt that communication from school leadership was clear were five times more likely to feel confident about their school’s handling of the disruption.

The report, carried out with Cambridge Partnership for Education, found communication between Education Technology (EdTech) companies and schools improved and impacted positively on communication between other communities, such as educators, leaders and parents. However, when teaching educators said they were hindered by a disparity in technical infrastructure between different types of school. In the first month of lockdown, students in private schools were twice as likely to access online lessons daily as compared to those in state schools. Teachers from disadvantaged schools reported that more than a third of their class would not have adequate access to technology.

The study found too little attention was paid to connections between members of the education community when school stopped for the majority of pupils in March 2020. This impacted the ability of the system to be self-supporting because the concerns, anxieties and lack of confidence felt by one community were not accurately understood by the others. Over 30% of heads, teachers and parents felt supported by colleagues and school leaders. More educational leaders and parents than teachers felt that nobody was supporting them.

Professor Rose Luckin, Professor of Learner-Centred Design at UCL Knowledge Lab and Director of EDUCATE Ventures Research Limited, said: “A supreme effort was made by many people: parents, teachers, EdTech companies and school leaders alike to secure learning for many students during the pandemic restrictions. Now, we must build upon the foundations for the future by creating more communication and better connections between the different groups of people that make up the education ecosystem.

“Technology has an important role to play in this respect. It is also essential that we move away from any notion of a “one size fits all” model of support and pay far greater attention to the diversity within our school population.”

Dr Carmel Kent, EDUCATE Ventures’ Head of Educational Data Science, said: “In carrying out this research, we wanted to listen — to teachers, to parents, to school leaders and to the EdTech companies trying to support them. We modified our research questions and methods as the lockdown evolved to bring a holistic and authentic picture of the shock waves ripping through the education system.

“As a team, we emerged from this exercise completely in awe of the parents and schools of this country and of the huge burden they carried, and continue to carry, on their shoulders. This was a huge learning process, and we need to ensure those lessons are learned.”

Jane Mann, Managing Director, Cambridge Partnership for Education, said “Listening to voices across education systems is vital. This is a unique moment for ministries of education, leaders and educators around the world. There are intense challenges, but there is also rapid discovery. Listening, learning and responding together will fuel real progress in education.”

Download the first volume of the report, Shock to the System: Lessons from Covid-19 here. The evidence volume will be published shortly, and further articles on the findings will appear on this channel in the coming days and weeks.